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> The hope among lawmakers and transportation officials is that the city will recoup that expense, and more A poor goal that's hard to quantify and often not m
by kodablah 7y ago
> The hope among lawmakers and transportation officials is that the city will recoup that expense, and more
A poor goal that's hard to quantify and often not met (especially for social services at smaller community levels). Just consider it a sunk cost up front and be honest about it. Then the debate can at least be about whether it's a worthy cost socially. Putting a monetary recoup hope unhelpfully moves the debate away from the social obligation side.
- bobthepanda 7y agoCompare this to Intercity Transit in Olympia, WA, which is going fare-free mostly because it needs to replace the fare collection system on older buses and install them on new ones, but - the regional pass is on a path of deprecation in favor of a new system. So they'd need to buy two sets of fare collection systems in the span of a few years - the cost to install these fare collection systems even once is more than what the agency currently collects in fares - the fares only make up 1.5% of revenue anyways, so the impact is not as large as it would be in, say, New York where fares are north of 40% of revenue https://www.intercitytransit.com/zerofare https://www.intercitytransit.com/zerofare